Hellmouth - GrandmasterJ

 

    Hellmouth is a map that takes place in Hell! Players must defend a statue at the mouth of Hell before venturing in and killing a bunch of monsters.

SCMapDB page

Author: Ike Brovlofski

Date of final release: 2005

Maps in package: 2

Map review of Hellmouth

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | January 22, 2022 | 5488 characters

    Hellmouth is a map I went into thinking it would suck, reading the description and looking at the screenshots I thought I would have a hell of a time playing this. My main concern was that I would have to defend the statue in the first map. Much to my surprise and joy no monster ever tried to attack the statue, this was a ton of pressure off me.

    The first map is simple wave defense. Protect the statue (no pressure, the enemies don't attack it, at least not that I saw) and kill all the enemies. Players start with a crowbar and have to fight zombies and fat zombies. Eventually an mp5 and revolver appear at the base of the statue. Enemies get much harder and more numerous here. A big concern of mine was that when I died and respawned I was surrounded by enemies and had to run to pick up guns. As the waves got harder and gonomes (which can eat the player and restore all their health) started to appear this fear grew. Eventually, with two players, we were able to beat back the waves of enemies and win the map. But it was real annoying for a while. Spawning in a swarm of enemies and having to run through them to get back useful weapons was stressful and not fun. When gonomes were introduced we had to balance keeping them busy so they didn't regenerate while also picking up weapons and doing damage. If we had to deal with the statue being targeted as well this map may have been unplayable, at least for just two people.

    There is also a hurt trigger where the enemies spawn, I got killed by it once and my teammate got killed by it two or three times. Enemies were fine though and often ran through the hurt trigger and past the giant portal out of our sight. We had to shoot blindly into the portal a few times to goad the monsters to run back out.

    The second map was a linear map and was not as fun as the first, which is interesting because I prefer walkthrough maps to defense maps. The second map started off in a cavern and a giant metal door. A small tunnel opens up to the left and players must crawl through to an admittedly cool looking room. It had some sick skull pillars, an ok giant spiderweb, and a big gray Mario-esque pipe into what looked like lava, but turned out to be harmless water. Watch out for the crumbling bridge, I saw it coming from a mile away and let my teammate take the fall.

    Past the water is the worst part of the map set, players must swim up onto a platform and fight off alien controllers named after Fox Mulder and Dana Skully. They respawn a couple times and they spam their attack crazy fast. The projectiles also home in on the player so ducking down into the water does not protect you. We thought they respawned forever and began to ignore them, but they are deadly and will not be ignored. At some point they stopped respawning and we breathed a sigh of relief. If they spawned endlessly we would not have finished the map. The puzzle of this room is getting past some skull tentacles in the middle via narrow walkways and use the crystal at the end of the walkway. This will make platforms rise up allowing access to another crystal. Using both crystals open the big door at spawn and creates more alien controllers. At this point my teammate and I both died, but the door was open and neither wanted to finish off the controllers or deal with that room again.

    Through the door is an evil machine straight out of toon run, and another pipe down. At the bottom of this pipe is the second worst part of the map set, a pond surrounded by gonomes and vortigaunts. Both types of enemies will walk underwater just fine, so players who drop into this pond are immediately surrounded by enemies, fast gonomes that shake the player's screen on hit and vortigaunts that zap players from afar. Combine this with gonomes regenerating health on player corpses and the vortigaunts resurrecting their comrades means this fight sucks.

    After players die a lot in this little pond there is a relatively simple area with a crystal that opens a door to release the map set's last monsters. When the last one is dead the map ends.

    Both maps look good. The first map has cracks in the ground radiating light and the second map has some wicked looking spikes. There is good brushwork, good lighting, some really nice effects (players spawned in on beams of light), and fun custom models.

    The map started strong, carefully lining up headshots on swarms of zombies with a revolver was almost zen-like. It was broken up by swarms of faster enemies that made us backpedal and circle strafe. There were some waves that were less fun than others, but overall, and especially because the statue wasn't targeted, the wave defense was fun. The second map, walkthrough style, were some very frustrating sections broken up by decent action.

Pros:

• Most waves in the defense section were very fun
• good looking map, very nice details and good textures
• all models are custom and combine with the environment to deliver a believable hellscape
• The statue doesn't get targeted, at least not that I saw

Cons:

• enemies swarm spawn and guns spawn relatively far away
• the second map's room with the skull tentacles is extremely annoying
• the second map's pond room with the gonomes and vortigaunts is extremely annoying

Score: 6.5 / 10